Facebook is reportedly working on adopting the hashtag, one of Twitter’s more creative features. The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is testing out an implementation that would enable users to click on a hashtag and be sent to a page where conversations around that particular topic would be grouped, which would be very similar to how Twitter search functions.

I grew up in Mississippi, where the women are Southern Belles with good manners and know how to shoot a shotgun. The other thing Southern women know how to do is spread the news. Word spreads fast if someone has a new love interest, knows about a special sale or has a juicy piece of gossip! Read the rest of this entry »

Google enraged the masses last week by changing their privacy policy – mainly because it reminded everyone that Google had a privacy policy. The company who was formerly a poster child for open source, flipped from serving the 99% to acting like the dreaded 1%. Just before that, Google changed their search algorithm to promote their own social networks (Google+, YouTube) over Twitter and Facebook. The public outcry was so intense that it culminated into bookmarklet called Don’t Be Evil.

The year is almost over and that can only mean one thing – list season. Every one who is anyone is busy creating their lists of 2011 and Facebook is no exception as they recently posted the 40 Most Shared Articles in 2011.

What time of day should I post? How long should my status messages be? Is it okay to ask followers to like something?

These are just a few of the question that every page administrator faces daily. There are a lot of “best practices” floating around out there that helps with these inquiries, however, there isn’t a whole lot of data to back them up … until now.

The people over at Momentus Media analyzed the top 20,000 Facebook pages to find out which posting techniques really work and placed their findings online for the entire world to see. For each analysis, they dissected 10,000 – 250,000 posts to find out exactly what drives interaction, and more importantly, how to replicate it.

It really is an inevitability: At some point in the life of your business there is bound to be someone who has a bad thing or two to say about your company. Even if you always do everything right, someone isn’t going to like you, and they’ll be determined to tell the world about it.

More often than not, the first place people go when they have something negative to say about a company these days is Twitter. Of course, they do this because all of their friends are on Twitter, but they also do this because they know your company is most likely on Twitter too!

Twitter (and social media at a higher level) have become the main medium for expressing dissatisfaction with a company or brand. So you need to be prepared to deal with the negative posts when they start showing up. Here are a couple of ideas for how to do that:

Address the issue in private, and ask the poster to remove the negative post.

Finding a way to address a customer’s complaint via the medium he or she used to express that complaint can do a lot to solve negative feedback. Doing this says “We’re paying attention to you and your criticism and will meet you where you are to resolve this for you.”

Once you’ve resolved the issue, it may be appropriate to ask the person to remove the negative post. This should only be done when you perceive the original post to contain factual inaccuracies or exaggerations about your business. The idea is not to erase the incident from existence, but to ensure the truth is being told about your brand. If someone says “I came to XY Restaurant yesterday and my sandwich was horrible”, you should leave it be.

In situations like the one above where it is not appropriate to ask someone to remove a negative post, you should encourage him or her to create a second post, highlighting the positive outcome and how you addressed their complaint. In the above scenario it may be “Big thanks to XY Restaurant for contacting me and giving me 2 free lunches in the future, in order to make it up to me!”

Many times addressing the issue directly can turn a negative into an eve bigger positive!

Provide an alternative location for customers to voice complaints.

It never hurts to attempt to prevent a negative comment from being posted about your brand in the first place. Create a page on your site, and link to it from your social media profiles, that is dedicated to accepting critiques and feedback from your customers.

Many times this will be enough to encourage the customer to communicate via this direct channel as opposed to a public social media post.

Of course, once you receive the negative feedback via this page/form, make sure to address it! Customer service is still important to your customers and your business, so don’t neglect it!

One thing to never do: Get into a public argument.

The last thing you want as a brand is have your audience become polarized by a public battle with a disgruntled customer. Avoid confrontation in public like (insert scary disease here)! No one wants to see that in their social media feed and it won’t turn out good for you, no matter what!

Negative critiques of your business will eventually happen. It’s important to keep an eye on what’s being said about your brand and stay proactive! Stay on top social media platforms and communities and remember: Your reputation exists whether you choose to control it or not!

by Daniel Hadaway

It really is an inevitability: At some point in the life of your business there is bound to be someone who has a bad thing or two to say about your company. Even if you always do everything right, someone isn’t going to like you, and they’ll be determined to tell the world about it.

More often than not, the first place people go when they have something negative to say about a company these days is Twitter. Of course, they do this because all of their friends are on Twitter, but they also do this because they know your company is most likely on Twitter too!

Twitter (and social media at a higher level) have become the main medium for expressing dissatisfaction with a company or brand. So you need to be prepared to deal with the negative posts when they start showing up. Here are a couple of ideas for how to do that:

FlashXML.net wrote an interesting (and useful) blog about the reasons employers look at your Facebook account.

The article lists 10 reasons that are unique in some ways, but all pretty much boil down to this: Are you an honest, upright person? To put it another way: Are you the kind of person that employers want working for them?

This article got me thinking, and not about my secret life as a lip-dub star and the voice behind the Bronx Zoo Cobra Twitter account. No, it got me thinking about how your business is no different than an employee in this article. And your employer is every person who has ever considered doing business with you.

Public Relations is a tricky task to manage. Over-engage, and people start to tune you out. Under-engage, and your PR doesn’t really have an effect, thus defeating the purpose. Plus, finding and then interacting with your customers and clients can be time-consuming and fruitless. It’s a tough job, but it’s vital to the success of your business!

While we aren’t purporting to have a magic wand that will solve all of those challenges, we did recently gain insight into an interesting study that shows not only where effective PR is taking place, but also where great marketing is taking place.

In part 1 of this series, we discussed how focusing on content over quantity of followers will dramatically increase the results you’re seeing from Facebook fan pages. In this installment, we’ll reveal a surprising find on what kind of content converts fans into paying customers.

If you have a Facebook fan page for your business and aren’t seeing the results you’d like to, you aren’t alone. A study by Sysomos reports that only 4% of Facebook pages have more than 10,000 fans. Of course that isn’t a stat that is either surprising or important to your results.